I am a newbie here. I am running virtualbox to have a Windows 7 virtual machine on my Macbook Pro.

I set it up on my IMac with no problems, but for some reason the machine I've got set up on Macbook does not recognize that there's a CD in the CD drive. This means that I can't install any of my software because it can't find the CD. Is there some setting I should change? I have tried inserting and reinserting the CD, restarting both the virtual machine and the laptop, and it still thinks there is no CD in the drive.

Your virtual machine has a virtual CD drive. The latter will not be associated with your hosts CD drive unless you make it so in the VM Storage settings. My preferred alternative is to make an ISO image of the CD and associate the VMs virtual CD with the ISO file instead of the host drive. That way I can be sure that the host will not interfere when the CD is inserted, plus I can't do anything stupid like install the software on the host by mistake: and the ISO is far less noisy in use...

You should be able to see the real CD/DVD in the guest but you must tell the guest that it is there. Click on the devices tab at the top and select the hosts CD/DVD. this will mount the drive for you in the guest (note MAC usually needs the passthrough enabled in the guest settings). When changing the disk in the drive you should first eject the drive in the guest not just the actual drive.

kiwicow wrote:I don't mind connecting the CD drive to my virtual machine, but I've played around in the settings and can't seem to figure out how to get it to work. Any tip?

You should see a CDROM device in the storage settings now (left side of Storage dialog). If not, add one. Select the CD-ROM device. The right side of the dialog has an "Attributes" field, to the right of that is a little CD icon. Click the icon to get a list of options, including associating the drive with a file or a host drive.

kiwicow wrote:Conversely, any tips on how to create an ISO from the start up disks?

"ISO" is the filesystem used on a CD/DVD. An "ISO file" is a straight, uncompressed sector by sector copy (image) of the CD. Hence, any program that can create images of disks can create ISO files, provided it has an option to disable compression if provided for. I'm not a Mac user but I believe OS X comes with an equivalent of Linux's "dd" utility.

mpack wrote:"ISO" is the filesystem used on a CD/DVD. An "ISO file" is a straight, uncompressed sector by sector copy (image) of the CD. Hence, any program that can create images of disks can create ISO files, provided it has an option to disable compression if provided for. I'm not a Mac user but I believe OS X comes with an equivalent of Linux's "dd" utility.

OS X comes with the standard *nix dd utility yes.

OS X also comes with the graphical Disk Utility which allows users to easily create images of optical media, either in "CD/DVD master" format (ISO) or compressed DMG format. The latter is much preferred for recent VirtualBox versions as it is compressed and contains checksums, so the image cannot get silently corrupted.

I am running windows 8 via virtual box on my macbook pro but when I put a CD in the drive on my macbook and open up windows 8, I am not able to download the software. I go into windows explorer and I do not see the disk. I read this post and I tried to add a cd in the storage section. I tried to click on the cd under devices, but it does not open. Are there step by step instructions on how to attach the drive so that when I put a cd or dvd to download software on windows 8, it will read the disk that is in the drive.

I am not sure what is going on, but this works fine for me on a Windows 7 host.

All you should need to do is click the "Devices" tab at the top of the Win 8 window and click on CD/DCD devices and select the CD/DVD drive in the host. Then when you insert a CD/DVD in the host drive, WIn 8 should display a message to tap here to display DC/DVD options. Clicking on it should display the familiar message asking what you want to do with the inserted CD/DVD.

Thanks Bill for responding. I clicked on host drive and it did ask me what to do with CD. Thanks for the quick response. I have another question. I am trying to open up some of my files from my external drive in windows 8. I went to devices and clicked on usb devices and I see seagate portable, but it is greyed out and I cannot click on it. I don't know where to click to get to the external drive. Please help again........thanks again!!!!